From: Sandy Petersen (sandyp@idcube.idsoftware.com)
Date: Wed 30 Mar 1994 - 07:07:21 EEST
Andre Fernandes mentions:
>there's been some gossip about interbreeding of different species.
>Don't Broos breed with ANYTHING? :)
You bet. The players in my campaign once encountered a broo that was the offspring of its' father's mating with a tree. But even that wasn't as nasty as the broo that had hybridized with a metal stove. Unicorns can mate with virgin mares, zebras, and does. Probably a few other things, too. And I am an adherent of the belief that harpies mate alternately with human males and vultures (see, Piers Anthony's good for something after all), if only because it makes my players gag to think about it. ("Don't let them take you alive!") There's also the fine case of Gloranthan goblins, which are all male -- they mate with fertility nymphs only.
Let's see. There must be other fine cases. Breeding in Glorantha certainly doesn't follow natural law. For that matter, there are species in Glorantha that never breed at all -- Magisaurs, for instance. And krarshtkids (IMO all krarshtkids come directly from their awful mother by budding -- breeding would be contrary to the nature of Krarsht).
Dave Dunham sez:
>most broos are goat-like has to do with how domestic animals are
>treated, and how far they tend to be from settlements. If the goats
>tend to stray up in the hills, they're more susceptible to broos
>than cattle.
In addition, goats are much less likely to be kept in barns at night, and they also go feral more often. Naturally broos tend to look like whatever creatures are most available in an area. Nonetheless, I think that a "goatish" tendency is visible on occasion even among broos that have not bred with goats for many many generations (like Praxian broos, for instance). Although there are no cloven-hoofed ungulates on the Pamaltelan savannah, I assume that broos there often sport paired horns.
Before the influxion of Chaos, the broos, children of Ragnaglar and Thed, presumably had a fixed shape. I think that that "original broo" was horned, biped, and more-or-less capriform. Though the many interbreedings and chaos taints have masked the original broo form, it is still there as a root form. Of course, some breeding lines of broos move further and further away from the original broo form, possibly eventually becoming gorp, unique chaos monsters, or other non-broo. The Slime broos from Dorastor are a fine example of broos that are well on the devolutionary track away from true broodom.
Martin sez:
>As for Urox, I believe his emergence as a separate cult is a second
>or third age development. The same with Humakt. Before that, they
>were just what we would call subcults of Orlanth.
>Gosh, Sandy, you sound like you don't LIKE trolls.
I LOVE trolls. They're my bread and butter. But I don't want them to be bowdlerized or weenified into shadows of their former selves. I like gritty, hungry, violent trolls that make no apologies for the fact that they ENJOY eating sentient life. "If you don't like it, don't evolve to sentience." ;)
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